Contours

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I enjoy drawing contours, daft I know. It was very time consuming doing this and eventually I decided to stop and leave some white paper showing.

The nuclei of the pattern were coloured dots created from ink coming through the back of the previous page. My hubby thinks they look like electron shells for benzene? I think I understand where he’s coming from. I’m starting a course on illustration on Monday. Trying to calm last minute nerves with a little drawing meditation. Doing this creates flow, and I forget the time, day, the stresses of the world around me.

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Blue

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Today’s challenge in a friends Facebook group was to post a picture of yourself with the colour blue. I can’t find my facepaints so I put on a hat, picked up a magazine and stood in our bathroom with its blue painted walls.

I guess I could filter it and change it to intensify the blue.

Meanwhile I’m thinking of how to depict purple, which is tomorrows challenge. The idea is to collect a whole rainbow of colours and then the admin of the group will create an artwork. Interesting…

 

Our flag just won the FA Cup of flags!

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I helped design this flag with about seven other people in a competition to design a flag for the village of Penkhull, part of Stoke-on-Trent. I didn’t realise till last week that it had been entered into a national competition to choose the best flag design in an FA style set of votes.

After weeks of tension we reached the final and fought against Preston today.

The result was very close. After Preston took an early lead, votes for Penkhull overtook them. At the end the result was 52% to 48% in favour of Penkhull!

We are a village of about 6000, in a city population of about 250,000. Apparently around 6000 voted on twitter for the penkhull flag which equals 100% of Penkhulls population!

There is now talk of a European Cup of flags!!

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Artrage and photodirector

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Drawn in artrage oils and edited in photodirector changing the colours and style.

This is what I mean about playing with are, yes this is a scrappy sketch, but it’s my scrappy sketch, amended and changed how I want. I would love to illustrate a book using a style like this. I could imagine creating pictures about a crazy cat in a children’s book.

I was once offered the opportunity to illustrate a book but the publishers woukd only allow the author to use an in house illustrator. I was very disappointed as I think I could have created a different atmosphere by working with her. Oh well….

I loved drawing horses.

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Probably drawn around 2011 or 2012. Drawn at sketchfu. There was something very satisfying about being able to draw what you want, and not being constrained by ‘colouring book’ style websites where you add pre selected colours and everyone’s pictures are the same except for the speed you do them. I am on one of those sites, and although it’s good to see what the image turns out to be, it’s really just like painting by numbers, except you can’t go mad and add different colours to jarring effect.

In fact what I might do is buy some painting by numbers kits when all this is over, and fill them in with different colours, just neatly completed, or try and do a time-lapse film of it.

Ideas….

I’m sure other artists have already thought of this….

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Brand new challenge

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I am still sketching, a new person is posting challenges for Stoke-on-Trent urban sketchers and it is great to be inspired by them. The challenge was locality.

I did a drawing of the view through my window, locality…near a pottery. This is a digital drawing done on my tablet.

The sun has been shining all day and I went out in the garden and pruned back some of the trees that are growing over the summerhouse. The cherry trees are still covered in a large crop which is gradually ripening. No doubt the birds will get them first.

More later.

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Time for a cool glass

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Thirsty, I really fancy a cool glass of juice. But I don’t have any in. So a glass of cold water with some ice will have to suffice.

I had to do some shopping today. I was pushing a trolley and people kept scooting past me. Two meter distance? it seemed that people were not that bothered! I get in and out as quickly as I can. There is the problem of using touch screens, I walk round with gloves and a face mask, but have to take the gloves off to put my pin in! I could try ordering on line, but apparently there is a three week wait for slots!

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Old drawings 2005

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I was mooching about my PC looking for old pictures that had been saved onto it before I had to have it fixed. Well after ages of searching I found the old drive they are on. It comes with a timeline, so I can find when they were posted. These are a few of my drawings from Youdraw in 2005. I also helped moderate the site. Apparently its been upgraded. When I’ve got my new drawing tablet I might draw some more.

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Last day of this challenge.

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Ariel birds! These were visiting our bird feeder today. I only got a glimpse so I added the flying one from a photo. Can’t tell you what these are they are all I could draw, but the one on the feeder was a bluetit. But I couldn’t get the details quick enough….. This is the last of this challenge. This was day 38. The last of the current challenge. We may be moving on to a list of prompts every other day to keep going….

I have to say this has made me look at things differently and made me realise I can draw a lot of things, although my straight lines are a bit wobbly!